Comparing the extreme right in Belgium and France Gilles Ivaldi, Marc Swyngedouw To cite this version: Gilles Ivaldi, Marc Swyngedouw. Comparing the extreme right in Belgium and France: Party ideology, electoral success and party system change. 2005. halshs-00090333 HAL Id: halshs-00090333 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00090333 Submitted on 30 Aug 2006 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Comparing the extreme right in Belgium and France Party ideology, electoral success and party system change FINAL VERSION - Last updated: Wednesday, 22 June 2005 Contains 10 footnotes and 52 formatted bibliographical references 1 Gilles Ivaldi CIDSP-PACTE (CNRS)-Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Grenoble 2 Marc Swyngedouw Catholic University of Brussels / ISPO-University of Leuven *** UNPUBLISHED VERSION – NOT FOR QUOTATION *** ABSTRACT The purpose of this chapter is to contrast the situation of the Flemish Vlaams Blok and the French Front national on a number of key elements of party ideology, political competition and party system change since the mid 1980s. In deconstructing the ‘new society’ utopia of the VB and FN, the analysis shows important similarities in the doctrine and, in spite of those parties’ alleged commitment to representative democracy, illustrates a common and developed set of ethnocentrist, authoritarian, and anti-egalitarian values underpinning an essentially non- democratic ideology. The analysis draws on the electoral success, organisational development and institutionalisation of the far right in both countries and points to the comparable systemic isolation of those parties despite the growth and stabilisation of their electorates. Introduction The revival of extreme right wing parties in Western Europe has attracted considerable attention from academic research. Broad comparative studies of far right politics across the nations of Europe have provided landmark contributions in the field and led into the construction of explanatory models (see for instance Kitschelt, 1995; see also more recent work by Betz & Immerfall, 1998; Hainsworth, 2000; Schain et al, 2002; Gibson, 2002; Eatwell & Mudde, 2004). Research has emphasised the heterogeneity of this specific group of parties in relation to their varying historical roots and different mechanisms of party system integration. A number of classificatory attempts by scholars have underlined the similarities between the Vlaams Blok (VB) in Flanders and the French Front national (FN) as members of a same class of ‘racist’, populist and anti-system parties on the extreme right fringe of the political spectrum, which differs significantly from other types of ‘neo-populist’ parties (e.g. the Progress parties in Scandinavia, the Austrian FPÖ, the Lijst Fortuyn in the Netherlands or the Northern League in Italy) or more traditional neo-fascist actors such as the Italian MSI/AN and the German radical right (see the criteria for classification suggested by Taggart, 1995; Mudde, 2000). What is of particular relevance to the present analysis is the concept of ‘extreme right ideology’ in reference to a persistent and structured set of beliefs –in short the opposition to liberal democratic institutions, inequality as a core value, the notion of decline, clear-cut moral differentiation, subordination of the individuals to their community and the search for a third way between capitalism and communism–, as opposed, for instance, to more context- dependant and ‘elastic’ concepts such as populism or neo-populism (Abts, 2004) whose fundamental notions such as the people, democracy or national sovereignty, and their combination, lack substantial content. Whichever definitional terms used, populism remains essentially a vehicle for mass-mobilisation of existing anti-Establishment and anti-party resentment whose identity is mostly one opposing the ordinary people to the political elite (Swyngedouw 2005b). The purpose of this chapter is to examine the situation of the Flemish VB and the French FN on a number of key elements of party ideology, political competition and party system change since the mid 1980s. The in-depth and cross-national analysis of the views and core ideological beliefs forming part of the FN and VB ‘new society’ utopia points to important similarities in the system of ideas developed by those parties, with a strong emphasis on the ethnocentrist authoritarian and anti-egalitarian components expressed in what appears to be an essentially non-democratic ideological corpus 1. Whilst electorally irrelevant throughout the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the Flemish and French far right parties have since enjoyed increasing levels of electoral support and gradually managed to establish themselves as serious competitors against mainstream parties of the moderate right. This indisputable success in the polls has largely contributed to altering the balance of forces within their respective party system and posed unprecedented challenges to the traditional format of national politics in Flanders and France. Despite however the growth and stabilisation of their electoral support over time, both parties remain clearly identified with the far right by the vast majority of voters. They suffer from isolation on the margins of mainstream politics with very limited coalition potential and as of yet have failed, unlike their populist counterparts in Austria, Italy or the Netherlands, to enter the sphere of national government. 1. The far right utopia in Belgium and France The ideology of the VB and the FN has significantly expanded over the years. Previous research has highlighted the role of political entrepreneurship and charismatic leadership amongst those parties. They often present versatile programmes and their highly centralised organisation allows them to respond quickly to emerging issues and exploit all critical political opportunities by dint of much ideological inconsistency (e.g. the ideological shift from free market to protectionism) (Betz & Immerfall, 1998). This probably partly explains why there is still much ‘definitional’ debate over the ideological nature of extreme right parties in Western Europe (Taggart, 1995; Griffin, 1996; Skenderovic, 2001; Ignazi, 2003). In order to express the essential nature of the Belgian and French far right weltanschauung , we prefer to draw on the conventional ideology analysis, in which concrete items are deduced from both implicit and explicit assumptions in party literature and party leaders’ speeches in the media. For the purposes of this analysis we have consulted party documents as well as 1 With regard to the ideology of the Vlaams Blok and Front national , the first section of this chapter is an updated and amended version of Marc Swyngedouw & Gilles Ivaldi, 2001, “The extreme-right Utopia in Belgium and France. The ideology of the Flemish Vlaams Blok , the French Front National and the Belgian Front National ”, West European Politics , Vol. (24), n°3, July, p.1-22. 2 interviews given to the press by key party figures. In the Belgian case the features of the VB ideological framework have been derived from documents such as ‘ Principles of VB ’ and the ‘70 point programme for resolving the aliens problem’, the electoral propaganda used for the national elections in 1991 and 1995, and for the European and local elections of 1994. Further information about the ‘solidaristic people's community’ favoured by the VB has also been drawn from previous analyses made by Gijsels et al (1989), Gijsels (1992 and 1994) and Spruyt (1995). For the French case: The FN’s activist textbook, 1991; 50 proposals on immigration, 1991; 51 point programme for social policy, 1992; 300 proposals on social and economic policy, 1993; Contract with the French for the sake of France, 1995; For a French future , 2002). Similar themes are developed in Mégret's MNR manifestos: The Charter of MNR’s values , 1999; 50 proposals for restoring security , 1999; The national alternative: MNR’s priorities , 2002). It should also be remembered that the views and ideas to be explored are mainly those of hard-core party members and the leadership. The VB and FN voters are only familiar with a few of the most striking themes of those parties' propaganda: notably anti- immigration and opposition to the traditional parties and their ‘corruption’ (Swyngedouw, 2001; Perrineau, 2003). Here the emphasis is on those parties’ views of humanity, the world and the relationship between the individual and society. Using the definition suggested by Mannheim in Ideology and Utopia (1960), the extreme right ideology can be regarded as a developed system of ideas, whose utopian component is comprised in the refusal of the existing status quo. According to the utopian far right programme, the ultimate goal is to change the established power relations and governing rules in contemporary society. More specifically, the desire for a radical transformation of the socio-political system and the attack on the social-democratic consensus lie at the heart of the extreme right’s